Genre: Thriller

Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips

Thrillers are hit-or-miss with me. Either I’m obsessed with them, or they fall flat. Fierce Kingdom fell flat for me, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the fault of the book? I think I wasn’t quite the right audience for this thriller. Firstly, a lot of the actual suspense would have hit home better with a mother. The first half of the book is all about Joan’s fear about Lincoln, and something happening to her son. There’s a lot of flashbacks about her son, and I do feel like all this would have been more relatable to a parent. I don’t […]

Posted February 4, 2019 in Reviews // 1 Comment //

Misery by Stephen King

Wow. So, a million years ago, my then-boyfriend sat me down and decided that for date night, we were going to watch Misery. He told me it was based on a Stephen King book, like that would give it brownie points because it was based on a book. I remember cringing a lot, and not loving the general flow of the movie – the actors, especially. I remember being hooked. Fast forward about six years later to today. I married that schmuck, and Misery popped up on my TBR. I remembered the story being formidable, and I’ve read a lot of Stephen […]

Posted December 6, 2018 in Reviews // 3 Comments //

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

Retired detective Bill Hodges is wasting away in front of his television. That is, he’s wasting away until a letter makes its way to him, bearing the signature of a killer he wasn’t able to catch. Suddenly Hodges has something to pry him out of his Laz-E Boy and back on the streets, where he does a little investigating outside the law… to bring the City Center Killer – aka Mr. Mercedes – to justice. Mr. Mercedes is told mainly from two perspectives – Bill Hodges and Brady Hartsfield. The hero and the villain. There is never any question of […]

Posted September 20, 2018 in Reviews // 2 Comments //

Night Film by Marisha Pessl

Night Film is like the marriage between an Alfred Hitchcock film and the perfect film noir. It’s difficult to read the story and not imagine Humphrey Bogart acting as the determined Scott McGrath. It’s good, it’s really good. It’s also very slow paced, a bit boring at times, and the minor characters easily outshine the protagonist. But the villain? The villain is sheer brilliance. This was a book I wanted to devour. The twisted, dark journeys Marisha Pessl takes the reader on as you trail Scott in his investigation have the annoying feeling of only scratching the surface of an even darker, […]

Posted July 26, 2018 in Reviews // 2 Comments //

Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

Everything that happened to TifAni is terrible. Really horrifyingly terrible. There are all sorts of trigger warnings for this book – rape, youth violence, eating disorders, homophobia, severe bullying at the least. The background story is disgusting and heartbreaking. But – and this is going to sound terrible – it’s really difficult to feel the full effect of the story when the main character is so unlikable. Her personality doesn’t make any of the things that happened to TifAni any less horrible, but in choosing to make this character so shallow and judgmental and unrelatable, it deadens the blow. The first […]

Posted July 18, 2018 in Reviews // 2 Comments //

Blood Will Out by Jo Treggiari

I haven’t read many YA thrillers. I suppose you can count Anna Dressed in Blood, but that’s about it. I do enjoy a good science fiction or psychological thriller, and I was pretty excited to be given this ARC. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of originality in this one and I found it came short of my expectations. First of all, the characters were very flat. The little we know of Ari before the incident is a single day glimpses into her life after school. We know she thinks this one guy is super hot, that she loves her best friend, and […]

Posted May 30, 2018 in Reviews // 9 Comments //